This invention relates to electronic television program guide systems, and more particularly, to interactive television program guide systems with passive content.
Cable, satellite, and broadcast television systems provide viewers with a large number of television channels. Users have traditionally consulted printed television program schedules to determine the programs being broadcast at a particular time. More recently, passive television program guides have been developed that allow users to tune to a television channel and view a list of program listings for upcoming programs. Passive guides have been developed that display video promotions in one portion of the screen, while displaying program listings in another.
Passive guides require users to wait until the list of program listings scrolls to display listings for the channel or time that the users are interested in. Users of passive guides have no way of controlling how quickly or how often listings appear, and have no way of immediately viewing listings for particular channels or time slots. In addition, passive guides do not provide users with the ability to schedule programs for recording, to view listings for favorite channels, to parentally control programs, or to perform other desirable functions that require user interaction.
Interactive television program guides have been developed that allow television program information to be displayed on a user's television. Interactive television program guides, which are typically implemented on set-top boxes, allow users to navigate through television program listings using a remote control. In a typical interactive program guide, various groups of television program listings are displayed in a grid or table according to predefined or user-selected categories. With interactive guides, however, there is generally no way to provide centrally-controlled promotional media such as promotional videos to users for display by the program guide while the users are viewing program listings.
Hybrid passive-interactive program guide systems have been proposed in which the video portion of a passive guide channel is combined with interactive listings. Such systems provide some of the benefits of interactive television program guides while maintaining the video capability of passive guides. It would be desirable if a hybrid program guide system could be provided in which the interactive program guide features of the system are coordinated with the passive components of the system in order to improve the display screens provided by the system, and to provide interactive program guide features related to passive guide content.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a hybrid passive-interactive television program guide in which the interactive program guide features are coordinated with the passive program guide components of the system.